Over the years, I’ve delved deep into the world of Kiss without liking
the band or its music. For this column, I’ve written about two books
that prominently involve Kiss: C.K. Lendt’s Kiss And Sell, a fascinating tome about the business side of the
Kiss empire, and Larry Harris’ And Party Every Day: The Inside Story Of
Casablanca Records, which explored the rise and fall of the iconic
label that gave the world Village People, Donna Summer, various disco
demigods, and Kiss. Gene Simmons was, and probably always will be the,
single most obnoxious interview subject I’ve ever had, and I covered
Kiss’ gloriously misguided concept album Music From The Elder for My
World Of Flops. Yet, early in the gloriously sordid memoir of former
Kiss drummer Peter Criss, Makeup To Breakup, I began to realize that
I’ve come to genuinely like these grease-painted knuckleheads. Blame it
on Stockholm Syndrome or softening with age, but I have an awful lot of
affection for Kiss and the tacky gothic universe the band created.

It feels safe to say that at this point, I like Kiss more than Criss does.

Makeup To Breakup positively vibrates with rage toward Criss’ former
bandmates, Kiss’ management, and everything Kiss represents. Criss
claims that extensive therapy helped him work through some of his anger
toward Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, and Ace Frehley, the book’s unholy
trinity of backstabbing hard-rock Judases, though I suspect that if
Criss had written this book before working through his rage, it would
have consisted of nothing but elaborate drawings of Simmons, Stanley,
and Frehley being brutally murdered with a series of Saw-style torture
devices.

But before Criss despised the other members of Kiss,
he embraced them as a band of brothers on a single-minded mission to
conquer the world. Makeup To Breakup affectionately chronicles the
group’s oft-told tale of glory won, lost, then regained, from its humble
origins as a band that combined the theatricality of Alice Cooper with
the androgynous role-playing of glam rock, to its late-’70s peak as one
of the biggest bands in the world, a money-making machine that left a
trail of devastation in its wake.

Criss’ book is wonderfully
sleazy and graphic even for a rock-star memoir. At the height of Kiss
mania, Criss almost literally had to fight girls off with a stick. His
entire universe was saturated with orgies, champagne, and cocaine
freak-outs. There are levels to rock-star decadence. The beginning level
is pretty tame. It involves drinking too much, the occasional blackout,
indulging in groupies, and maybe smoking a little weed. On the second
level comes cocaine, threesomes with groupies, and wrecking hotel rooms.
Criss and Frehley quickly graduated to the most advanced level of
rock-star decadence, one attained by the Mötley Crües, Led Zeppelins,
and Iggy Pops of the world. The band went from smoking weed and chasing
girls to fucking 19-year-olds in their signature make-up and costumes
(the ultimate form of rock-star narcissism), doing mountains of blow,
destroying hotels, hurling lunch meat on naked groupies then shoving
them in hotel elevators (a stunt in which Marilyn Manson’s crew also
engaged), and, in one of Criss’ more regrettable misadventures, dressing
up like Nazis and knocking on the door to Simmons’ hotel room and
demanding to see his papers. That would be an almost unforgivably
offensive transgression under the best of circumstances, but Simmons is
the progeny of Holocaust survivors (not to mention a mean, humorless
bastard), so he was particularly horrified by his bandmates’
shenanigans.

During the late ’70s, Criss’ onstage life was a
Hammer horror movie with better special effects, and his offstage and
backstage life was one giant Fellini-esque fuck-fest. As a
street-fighting, Gene Krupa-worshiping, weed-smoking mama’s boy from New
York, Criss was never particularly grounded or practical, but once his
life became a surreal misadventure saturated in guns, sex, and drugs, he
really began to lose touch with reality.

One of Makeup To
Breakup’s most surprising, and refreshing, revelations is Criss’
acknowledgment of the central role gay men and gay iconography played in
crafting the band’s image. Criss credits Sean Delaney—a choreographer,
songwriter, and all-around renaissance man whom Criss says was a
transvestite “in his spare time”—with helping create the group’s
larger-than-life gothic persona. With its tight black spandex,
bracelets, platform shoes, teased hair, leather, homoerotic
choreography, and kabuki make-up, Kiss was the high-camp ideal of a
hard-rock outfit. Kiss’ billion-dollar shtick was informed as much by
the underground gay leather scene as Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath.
Delaney even took Criss on extensive tours of gay bars.

Kiss’
manager, Bill Aucoin, was also gay, and in one of the book’s many sordid
revelations, Criss writes that Frehley may very well have performed
oral sex on Criss during one of the group’s many coke-fueled orgies.
Criss writes that Frehley didn’t discriminate between men and women
during drugged-out sex parties, possibly because he was so fucked-up he
genuinely couldn’t delineate between actual women and dudes who were
awful pretty. Speaking of pretty, Criss spends much of the book casting
aspersions on the sexuality of screamingly flamboyant frontman Paul
Stanley, whom the group nicknamed He She for his raging androgyny and
effeminate stage persona.

But Makeup To Breakup isn’t
exclusively about homosexuality; dick size also figures prominently in
the narrative. Criss brags throughout that his penis is so huge he calls
it the Spoiler, because it spoils women for all other men. (Though I
like to imagine it’s also because it gives away the endings to movies.
So if a woman sleeps with Criss she’ll wake up sexually satisfied and
cognizant of the twist ending of The Sixth Sense.) Criss also credits
Frehley with an enormous cock, which he would whip out at the slightest
provocation, in addition to being a frenzied public masturbator. As for
Stanley, Criss writes that he was so lacking in the size department that
when Kiss went on tour with Aerosmith, he took to stuffing his crotch.

Makeup To Breakup dishes the dirt, literally: The book repeatedly
references Simmons’ refusal to bathe or wash his leather pants. In one
of the many vivid details that make the book so compulsively readable,
Criss writes that at one point Stanley had to share a microphone with
Simmons, and that his breath smelled even worse than usual because his
teeth were coated in his latest lover’s menstrual blood. In Makeup To
Breakup, Simmons is relentless in his intertwined pursuit of women and
money. When Simmons was in the manager phase of his career, for example,
he both managed and made sweet passionate love to a 63-year-old Yvonne
De Carlo. (Then again, if you grow up worshiping horror movies and comic
books, it’s got to be a thrill to have sex with Lily Munster, whatever
the age.)

Criss conquered the world with Kiss, but his
relationship with Simmons and Stanley quickly went from affectionate to
troubled to cold to impossible. To his credit, Criss acknowledges that
his bad behavior, cocaine abuse, and ego played a big role in his split
from Kiss, but he still blames Simmons and Stanley for poisoning the
onstage and backstage environment.

After Criss left Kiss, he
entered a wilderness period where he formed new bands and tried to
acclimate himself to playing 40-person shitholes like The Sandbox (so
named because the floor was covered in sand) instead of stadiums. Where
Criss’ Kiss cohorts treated him like an inferior, Criss’ adoring young
bandmates worshiped him as a god. He was, after all, a real live rock
star generously lending his talents, name, and fame to a bunch of
unknowns. This was healing medicine for his ego, which took a
never-ending series of blows during his time with Kiss. Criss’
mistreatment by his former bandmates made him treasure every
accomplishment, no matter how small. Criss sees himself as an
award-winning songwriter, for example, because “Beth” won a People’s
Choice Award. Criss fails to mention that the People’s Choice Award is
the Ford Pinto of awards shows, and that he shared the honor with “Disco
Duck.”

Criss’ time in the wilderness ended when Stanley and
Simmons realized there was a vast fortune to be made by swallowing their
contempt for Frehley and Criss and embarking on a reunion tour that
made them bigger and more profitable than ever. In retrospect, it’s not
surprising that Criss eventually parted ways with the group again; given
all the bad blood and sinister vibes, it’s remarkable he lasted as long
as he did, for several tours that found the group performing to
ever-dwindling crowds and smaller paychecks.

The Kiss
reunion did, however, offer him something rare and wonderful: a second
chance, an opportunity to wipe the slate clean and return to a formative
experience with the benefit of decades of experience and perspective,
if not quite wisdom. Criss evolved in some ways; he no longer spent his
fortune on blow or “entertained” a basketball team’s worth of groupies
in his hotel rooms after shows. But he still found a way to sabotage the
chance of a lifetime by loudly broadcasting his contempt for Stanley
and Simmons, who treated him as an employee and underling rather than an
equal. Then again, what did Criss expect? It’s been said that the
definition of madness is to repeat the same action over and over again
and expect a different outcome. For Criss, madness is agreeing to tour
with Simmons and Stanley and expecting them to magically transform into
considerate, respectful, and generous gentleman.

Yet the
greatest wound to Criss’ huge yet fragile ego came when he learned that
Ace Frehley, one of his closest friends and only ally within the group,
was making $50,000 per show while he made only $40,000. For Criss, this
is the ultimate betrayal, the professional equivalent of stabbing him
then setting his corpse on fire. Yet it’s really, really hard to feel
sympathy for a man who makes $40,000 a gig yet feels he’s insultingly
underpaid.

Makeup To Breakup ends with Criss reflecting on his
own version of spirituality (even when fucking a dozen groupies a night,
he always made sure to say his prayers), mourning the failure of an
album of ballads he recorded (including a version of Stephen Sondheim’s
“Send In The Clowns” that commented obliquely on his troubled
relationship with Kiss), and recounting his triumph over breast cancer.
Criss is a quintessential survivor. As he notes more than once, he
really should have died at least a half-dozen times by now, a casualty
of car accidents, drugs, suicidal depression, or Herculean self-abuse;
yet he survived to tell a tale that may not qualify as art, but is a
hell of a nastily fun read

1 comment:

CM
said...

Peter is quick to blame anyone/everyone for his problems.When you watch film clips from Alive-AliveII he was a commanding force.He left KISS due to substance abuse.He had 1/4 of KISS which he sold.He sold the make-up rights.He was blessed with the opportunity to re-unite instead of embracing the second chance,he held out for money,complained bitterly and clashed with ego's. If he had taken the time to really polish his skills,apply himself maybe history wouldn't have repeated.I wish him the best,but instead of whining about what happened,move forward.